As the academic year draws to an end, I have been sitting back and reflecting on my learners’ performance. I’m quite proud of everything they have achieved in the short time they have been with me. They have learned so much and grown in leaps and bounds. The warm feeling of accomplishment and pride when my learners grow in their ability to use the language is what keeps me going in what can be a very stressful and challenging career.
In addition to savoring my students’ many successes, I’ve been thinking about how to improve my teaching as I am a firm believer in what is sometimes called reflective teaching. It’s the kind of teaching where you think about what has been useful and effective in your teaching (or not) and adjust it in order to achieve better learning outcomes. This practice of reflection is what helps you to hone your teaching skills and ‘master your craft’. It helps you move beyond theory and actually see what works in practice. Unfortunately, my students performed lower than expected in reading and I’ve been thinking about why that is and what I can do to change that.
As I research ways to develop my reading program, I’ve found out along the way that my students are not exceptions. Learners in Saudi Arabia often have difficulty with reading. When looking at the IELTS results statistics for 2017, I found that Saudi takers of the General IELTS exam got an average of a 3.9 in the reading section! Furthermore, reading scores were a bit better for Saudi takers of the Academic IELTS at an average of 5. This shows that difficulty with reading is common in this context.
One of the biggest challenges that I face teaching in the prep year is that there is a limited amount of time to help students develop their English. My goal is to help the students acquire the skills they need to continue developing their English after they leave the program. Therefore, I will work on building a resource bank of materials that students can use to improve their reading independently in conjunction with what I do in the classroom. These resources will address the different skills needed to read successfully. As I prepare them, I will share them on this site.
The first thing I looked at were areas of difficulty my students were having in order to determine where I should begin with my resource preparation. After some reflection, I have found the following areas that are challenging for my students:
– Vocabulary limitations: The biggest challenge for my learners when it comes to reading is their limited vocabulary. In general, the students find the reading passages difficult and the vocabulary too advanced despite having been placed at the level of the book they are studying from. For example, students test into the B1 level, yet find books with B1 level vocabulary quite challenging.
-Differentiating between main ideas and details: These learners often have difficulty differentiating between main ideas and details and the material we are using does not focus on developing these skills. Each unit offers more practice but there is no explicit training on how to answer these kinds of questions.
– Pronoun reference: Cohesive devices such as pronouns are often confusing for them. Pronoun reference questions are quite challenging for some students.
-Paraphrasing and summarizing: These are especially difficult particularly because of their level of vocabulary.
– Inference questions: These questions throw them off and I often hear students say that they are sure the answer is not in the passage.
In my experience, most course books (and teachers) do not explicitly teach strategy training. I have always tried to incorporate strategy training in my teaching, however, I feel that I need to make it more formal and concrete. The books we are using are quite interesting to the students and motivating for them so I don’t want to change to a new series. I think if I add an explicit reading strategy training component it will enhance the reading program and facilitate better performance. That’s where I’m going to start and go from there.
What do you think? Do you have the same problems with your learners?
EFL Resource Bank 